The Archikids get an Arriva London Heritage Fleet tour of the City

For the past few years we have been delighted to support the Archikids weekend, with posters on our City based bus routes to promote the event. We did the same this year, but then went a stage further by offering children and their parents guided tours of the City on one of our historic Heritage fleet buses, with Joe Kerr, the well-known lecturer in London Architecture as our tour guide.

The Saturday tours were offered as free events with two tours, one starting at 11.00 and the second at 13.30, both tours were “sold out” within 30 minutes of going on-line.

The bus picked up the forty participants in Mincing lane, and then circumnavigated the City to take in Bank, The Monument, St Pauls Cathedral, Ludgate Hill, Blackfriars, The Shard, London Bridge and then up past the ancient last piece of London’s Roman wall to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge returning to Mincing Lane to finish.

The Heritage Fleet bus RML 901, recognised as a beautiful piece of moving London Architecture, on which the tours were conducted, was new to London Transport in December 1961, and one of the first batch (a total of 24 vehicles) of 30 foot Routemasters coded RML, (with the L standing for Long or Lengthened).

The bus started its working life at Finchley garage on route 104 (North Finchley - Moorgate) which had replaced trolleybus route 609 in November 1961. In June 1966 the bus moved to New Cross as a training vehicle but returned to Finchley in February 1968 after its first overhaul. It operated on route 38 until October 2005, and then joined Arriva London’s Heritage Fleet as part of our moving history of London.

The children and their parents loved the tours, the bus, and Joe’s extremely informative commentary, as Rosa on the first tour said:- “ it was really good, Joe was great, and I’d like to do it again”.

Luke, the Open City representative for Archikids spoke to many of the parents and said;-

“The families loved the tour, and of course the bus! They thought the information was fantastic.”

If you’d like more information about the Heritage Fleet and the possibility of hiring one of our historic Routemasters, then give our commercial team a call on 020 8271 3411 or send us a message at #contactus

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